POSITIONAL
PRIORITY - As you abide in your position you will come to realize
that personal knowledge of the Lord Jesus is foundational to your spiritual
growth. You will not be tempted to hurry, you will not relegate that quiet
communion to a convenient part of the day. Rather, it will be your primary
responsibility and daily privilege.
By making the Lord Jesus your Object in life you will be a
joy instead of a grief to the Holy Spirit; He will be active instead of
quenched; He will convey your heart to the Son instead of having to convict you
of sin.
Paul's first and foremost consideration was to know the Lord
Jesus. He said, "Wherefore, I beseech you, be ye followers of
me" (I Cor. 4:16). The very first words Paul addressed to the
Lord Jesus were, "Who art thou, Lord?" (Acts 9:5). And
after thirty years of intimate fellowship with, and knowledge of Him he could
still say, "I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the
knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord " "That I may know him"
(Phil. 3:8,10).
As you gaze upon His glory your heart will cry out in ever
deepening comprehension and appreciation, "Worthy is the Lamb that was
slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom and strength and honor and glory,
and blessing" (Rev. 5:12).
THE WORK OF THE WOUNDS -
Care must be taken as you apprehend and appropriate the glories of His life, not
to miss or minimize the equally glorious marks of His death--"the Lamb
slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8). It was the
Cross by which the Son supremely glorified the Father. "I have
glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to
do" (John 17:4).
As for Paul it was, "God forbid that I should glory,
except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world is crucified unto
me and I unto the world" (Gal. 6:14). Because Paul kept the Cross
central in his life and ministry he was able to say, "For to me to live
is Christ" (Phil. 1:21).
THE
CROSS OBSCURED - The most pressing problem in the growth ministry
today is the minimization, or even the deletion, of the work of the Cross in the
life of the believer. The life of the Lord Jesus is emphasized until the
death of the Cross is all but eliminated. This sad fact is true of nearly
all deeper life conference messages given today, as well as most of the
contemporary "growth" books. The Cross may be there, but
barely--it is neither central nor foundational. The "tree" is
truncated.
CROSS
- CONFESSION - CHASTENING - When you find your fellowship with the
Father being hindered by sin, you come to appreciate more deeply the necessity
and worth of the work of the Cross. The more fully you count upon the past
crucifixion of the "old
man," the less your communion with the Father is clouded in the present.
Your counting on the
Cross is the answer to sin and the old man. The remedy for the sins you do
commit is confession. If in carelessness or carnality you allow or invite
your old man to sin, your all-important fellowship with your infinitely holy
Father is blocked. As a new creation in Christ Jesus you are free to take
sides with God against the old man, to honestly and fearlessly confess your sins
to Him and have your fellowship restored. "If
we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (I John 1:9).
It is true that the
Father may have to chasten (child-train) you concerning the sins committed even
when they are confessed, but then you are in fellowship with Him during the
chastening and able to receive the full benefit of it. "Now no
chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless,
afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them who are
exercised by it" (Heb. 12:11). All chastening is not due to our
sinning, but all chastening is administered by our Father in love for "our
profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness" (Heb. 12:10).
Hence, the Cross is to
be kept central if your life is to be kept centered in the Lord Jesus.
Counting on the Cross for your
communion is just as essential as it is for your walk. Unless it is
Cross-countered, the old man will ruin both. Reckoning upon your death on
the Cross is the only means of freedom for you to reckon yourself a new creation
in Christ Jesus. "For
we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake that the life also
of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh" (2 Cor. 4:1 1).
Your new life in Christ
is being developed through fellowship with Him and the Father. On the
basis of your reckoning the Holy Spirit keeps you in liberty in your heavenly
position. "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye,
being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all saints,
what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of
Christ which passeth knowledge that ye might be filled with all the fullness of
God" (Eph. 3:17-19).
"If I only know
the Cross in its substitution, but not, as Paul gloried in it, in its
fellowship, I cannot experience its full power for my growth. As the
blessed truth of its fellowship dawns on me, I see how by faith I enter into and
live in spiritual communion with that Lord Jesus who, as my Head and Life, made
and proved the Cross the only ladder to the Throne.
"This spiritual
union becomes a moral one. I have the same mind and disposition that was
in Christ Jesus. I regard the old man as sinful and only fit for the death
of the Cross. I accept the Cross, with its death to what is flesh, secured
to me in Christ Jesus, as the only way to become free from the power of sin and
the old man, and to walk in the new life by the Spirit of Christ" --A.M.